The Apprentice Project

Here’s how your CSR funding can help underprivileged children receive a value based education in their field of choice, expanding their horizons, awakening their imagination and teaching them to believe in themselves.

(ii) promoting education, including special education .. among children,

Here’s what Anand Gopakumar, the Campaigner for The Apprentice Project has to say about this project.

The Apprentice Project (TAP) is an initiative started by Teach for India Fellows that gives underprivileged students the chance to find and learn what they love. We connect them to skilled individuals from diverse fields (sports, visual and performance arts and technical) in a classroom environment for a period of six months.

The mentors provide their apprentices with a value based education in their field of choice, expanding their horizons, awakening their imagination and teaching them to believe in themselves.

TAP aims to inspire a movement – a movement that defines inequality as nothing but the lack of opportunity. It is a movement that strives to overcome inequality by giving all children the opportunity to reach their fullest potential.

WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?

300 million under-privileged students in India are denied the opportunity to find their passion and pursue it .

We believe in the transformational power of education – that a child’s background of poverty should not be allowed to dictate their destiny. We want to give them the tools to find their own unique means of self-expression, to find and do what makes them happy, to engage with and contribute to a world that largely ignores them.

A recent evaluation of extracurricular activities by the US Department of Education in public schools has proved that students who have better opportunities score dramatically better in math, creativity and language arts on statewide standardized tests. The possibilities of these kids earning a Bachelor’s degree are also higher.

OUR IMPACT

TAP has been running in 5 under-resourced schools in Pune since September 2016. We have 52 teachers impacting 800 students. Our teachers are experts from different fields leading a varied set of clubs – photography, electronics, public speaking, dance, theater, cricket and football are a few examples.

In 2017-2018 academic year we will be providing equal opportunities to 1500 kids across 10 under resourced schools in Pune.

HOW ARE WE GOING TO UTILIZE THE MONEY?

TAP started as a voluntary organization in 2016 by 4 Teach for India fellows and 52 other teachers. In the academic year 2017-2018, we need your help of 5 lakh to pay 1/3 of our teacher reimbursement of 250/session for 100 teachers, providing resources to the 10 underprivileged schools that we are working with, and to bear 1/10 of the administrative cost (teacher trainers, program managers, etc) of the organization.

Contribute if you want to radically change what a school education can look like for these children in under-resourced schools, if you believe that poverty shouldn’t dictate a child’s destiny, if you believe in the transformational power of the arts and sports.

It is time for us to move beyond just complaining about the state of education in India and start effecting some real change.

If you have a social project that’s high on innovation and impact, but running low on financial fuel, do write in to Nidhi Singh at nidhi@csrlive.in with your proposal, and we’ll feature it on FUND MY PROJECT.